Leman's eyes shot open, gasping out of both shock and exhaustion. His heart was racing and his breathing was rapid, his chest rising and falling with a steady rhythm as his breath condensed into clouds of fog in the cold air. A field of stars hung in the deep black sky above, shining through the faint shade of treetops which blended in almost perfectly with the dark night sky. He felt blades of grass tickling the back of his head, and the smell of smoke wafted into his nose. His ears were filled with the sound of chirping insects, distant animal calls, and the rustling of leaves in the chilling midnight breeze. With some effort, he rose to his feet and leaned against a nearby tree trunk. It felt as though the accumulated exhaustion of all the simulated trials he had just experienced were placed upon him all at once, causing his arms and legs to burn with fatigue. He could see orange-yellow light dancing in between the trees and followed it.
The campfire in front of him waved and crackled, casting shadows which danced along the dark treeline. Behind the ribbons of orange-red and yellow-white flame sat the now-familiar great wolf, its piercing golden eyes shining through even the light of the fire. Before it lay a recently slain boar carcass, steam billowing from its spilled entrails. The wolf licked its blood-soaked muzzle.
"What is this place?" Leman asked.
This is where we first met.
"We?" Leman said.
Your kind and I… 100,000 years ago.
Leman's eyes widened.
"100,000 years… but that would mean this is…"
Your kind has called it by many names, but I believe it is now referred to as "Terra".
Leman was silent for a moment, as the two watched each other intently from across the fire.
"I have encountered you three times now during my time here, wolf. I have relied on your guidance and power… yet I still do not know who or what you are, or why you are seemingly bound to me. Tell me wolf, what are you?" Leman said.
I am an ancient spirit of old Terra, as old as the mountains which have been paved over and mined into dust, and as old as the trees which were stripped and felled long ago. In this place, a thousand centuries past, your kind and I made a pact. When I found you, you were a fledgling species struggling to survive outside of your cradle, numbering only a few thousand… it is amusing to think back to those times and see how far you have come. The wolf bared its teeth in a menacing smile and deep, growling laughter echoed from within its chest.
"Are there… more of you?" Leman said.
Once there were many… very many. We walked among men until they had learned too much to pay us any mind, though we walked alongside them even still. When they took to the sky and spread across the stars, we followed. We were not often worshiped, though that was fine with me. The freedom of the immaterial plains, open and untamed… that was enough. The pernicious gods of the long-eared ones tried to hem us in, but their power was never as absolute as they liked to believe. They thought themselves safe in their walled cities, though they were humbled in the end… even the bloody-handed one. The wolf once again grinned with its toothy maw. It was a golden age… though not without its conflicts. More than a few quarrels between my kind caused the destruction of a planet or two… most of which involved me.The wolf said with a smirk. It tore into the boar carcass with its fanged mouth and swallowed a chunk of the steaming-fresh meat before continuing. After swallowing the morsel, the wolf's face grew dour. Then the dark times came… the long-ears in their endless hubris summoned the harlot god from the abyss of their depravity, herald of the primordial ruinations. Most of us were consumed by the four bastard gods, the rest hid away in remote corners of the galaxy to escape the heaven-shattering. I almost feel pity for the arrogant long-ears, their screams were so great and so many that they split the stars with their cries of agony. The wolf stared off into the night sky, a hint of begrudging yet solemn respect etched into its face. Now, there is only me… and presumably those bound to your brothers.
"My… my brothers!?" Leman shouted, having almost been lost in the wolf's dream-like reminiscing.
I am surprised you didn't already know… though I suppose your father never was much for sharing. Some time after the heavens shattered, your father found me on the ice-bound world I had claimed dominion over… Fenris, I believe the humans called it. He told me of his intent, and the other ancient spirits he had convinced to join him. He believed he could convince me to submit to him with words alone. The wolf licked the dripping blood from the fur around its mouth. He was mistaken.
"You inhabited Fenris!? You fought my father!?" Leman said.
It was quite the battle. Tell me, how many continents does Fenris have?
"How many… only one, Asaheim… the Land of the Gods. The rest of the planet is covered by the world-sea." Leman said, his eyebrows furrowed. The wolf laughed deep within its chest.
Before our battle, there were two.
Leman leaned back; his mind barely able to process all that he had learned. Even his acceptance of the benevolent gods of this realm paled in comparison to this current revelation.
Ultimately, I yielded to your father's vision. I shared his desire for a galaxy free of the ruinous ones, where mankind was free to roam the stars once again. So, at the moment of your creation, your father bound me to your fledgling spirit.
"Why was I not aware of your presence before, even during my millennia of traveling in the warp? Why is it that you appeared only now, when I entered this strange place?" Leman said.
I am not quite sure myself… perhaps your father never intended for us to meet. He was always a most secretive and paranoid man, though he had ambition and courage to match it. As for why we were able to meet here and now… the walls and seals that kept the material and immaterial apart feel… weaker, somehow. It is possible that they have weakened enough for the barriers within your own soul that constrained me have weakened as well. The wolf turned and looked into the distance. When we first entered the veiled place, I felt a great sundering in the Warp. It was as if the trickle of power which flows between the material and ethereal planes had turned into a roaring river.
"What could have caused such a thing?" Leman asked.
I have only experienced this feeling once before, that being the moment of the pointed-eared ones' fall.
Leman could scarcely imagine what could have caused something of that magnitude… nor did he want to. His mind had begun churning like a tumultuous sea in response to these revelations, so chaotic that it was difficult for him to even think of any more questions to ask. Then, an echo rang throughout the forest. It was barely audible, but caught Leman's attention nonetheless. He spun around, searching for the source of the noise.
It appears our meeting is at an end once again. The wolf said, picking up the boar carcass in its teeth. Before we part, a word of advice:
Leman turned back to face the wolf.
Stay with the girl.
The echoing noise grew louder and more discernible as the wolf turned from the fire and disappeared into the darkness. The fire began to surge, the light shining brighter and brighter until it completely consumed Leman's vision. Everything went white as Admu's voice filled his ears.
"Mister Russ!" Admu shouted.
Leman blinked, his eyes adjusting to the light. He saw two shadowy figures standing above him, one familiar and another he didn't recognize. He rubbed his eyes, and was greeted by Admu's shining, rosy face framed by the braided flaxen hair draped over her horns. More concerning to Leman, however, was the giant, cloaked bird standing next to her.
"Mister Russ, thank goodness you're alright!" Admu exclaimed, lifting him up in her embrace.
"He's alive!" Tzeentch shouted with a look of surprise. He then cleared his throat and adjusted his expression to a more self-assured one. "I mean, of course he's alive! I predicted that the champion would pass all of my trials!" he said.
Admu set Leman back down after he began showing signs of asphyxiation, and he took a few moments to get his bearings. He was in the same cavernous chamber they had found themselves in when they entered the simulation, although with all of the lights turned on, he found it much less ominous than before. The strange being standing next to Admu was covered in blue feathers, cloaked in multicolor garments, and held a large, ornamented staff in its hand. Most curiously, atop its elongated neck was a decidedly bird-like head adorned with a headdress of feathers.
That must be Tzeentch… Leman thought. I'm not sure what I was expecting.
"What happened?" Leman said.
"Well, it appears that you suffered a life-threatening injury just before the simulation could complete. When your body was restored, it seems your psyche had not fully recovered, and you briefly slipped into a coma." Tzeentch said. "Aside from that, however, you did wonderfully!"
"And that 'Void Dragon'?" Leman said, eyebrow raised.
"Oh yes, that…" Tzeentch said, laughing nervously. "Just a minor, unforeseen complication… yes, nothing to worry about. Besides, it made for quite the finale, eh? Anyways, let's get you two out of this drab testing chamber and into somewhere more comfortable, shall we?" he said, guiding Leman and Admu out of the simulation room. He paused briefly to pull Admu aside. "Oh, and uh, Admu, how about we keep this little… 'escapade' a secret from your father, hm?" he said with a nervous smile.
"Of course, Uncle." Admu said, giggling.
Tzeentch led the two into an elevator on the far side of the room, which began taking them back up to the surface levels of the facility. Through the windows in the cabin, they could see each floor as they ascended past it. One was a dense jungle of cables, wires, and tubing, another a vast library with rows upon rows of bookshelves each nearly a hundred meters high, while yet another seemed to be some kind of indoor farm dedicated to growing crystals rather than plants. In each layer there were armies of what appeared to be brass automatons.
"Those machines…" Leman said. "What are they? I recall seeing them in the bowels of Khorne's fortress."
"Keen eye, champion." Tzeentch said. "Those are one of my most useful inventions, a fusion of my brother's knack for metallurgy and my own mastery of crystalline engineering. We have both found them quite useful as an inexhaustible and compliant workforce."
"Are they… abominable intelligences?" Leman said with a dark seriousness.
"Oh no, not at all." Tzeentch said, waving his hands in dismissal. "Constructs such as those would be far too unstable in the warp. Besides, you just had a taste of what they can be like a few moments ago. Imagine trying to work with one of those! Preposterous. Anyway, I'm sure you saw the crystal deposits on the side of the mountains on your way in, no?" Tzeentch asked.
"Oh yeah, I remember those." Admu said. Leman nodded in agreement.
"I chose the top of this mountain as the location of my monastery for a number of reasons, one of those being the confluence of psychic eddies which gather at its peak due to the thinness of the veil at this elevation." Tzeentch said. Leman recalled the flowing rivers of energy that wrapped around the spires of Tzeentch's fortress. "These currents gather here and solidify into crystal deposits of pure, undiluted psychic energy. They can act as both power sources and robust, psychic circuitry - an artificial soul, if you will." The door to the elevator opened, and Tzeentch led them out into the bottom level of a laboratory filled with all manner of scientific and magical implements. The brass-crystal constructs shuffled about, running and maintaining the arcane technology which filled the sprawling complex. "Of course, these souls are merely crude facsimiles of true souls… nothing like the work of your father. Speaking of…" Leman was alerted by the god's casual mention of the emperor as Tzeentch led them to a large holo-screen which displayed what appeared to be a genetic sequence broken down and analyzed. "While you were inside the simulation, I took the liberty of testing your genetic code as a matter of scientific curiosity…"
"You what?" Leman interjected.
"...and I have to say, your father is quite the genesmith! I haven't seen such intricate weaving of amino acids in eons. This one in particular is most astonishing to me." He said, waving his staff and causing the holo-screen to zoom into a snippet of genetic code. "At first glance I believed it to be some kind of junk sequence resembling anomalous genetic material from some other mammalian species, but upon closer inspection I realized that was merely the encapsulation for a highly modified variant of the psyker gene!"
Leman's eyes shot open. The pysker gene? That's impossible… he thought. However, given what the wolf-spirit had told him, he was disturbingly unable to completely dismiss the idea.
"It appears that this variant in its unexpressed state actually acts as a psychic inhibitor of sorts, preventing excess warp energy from building up within the gene's owner. If its tolerance levels are exceeded, it triggers a failsafe which prevents chaotic mutation by replacing affected DNA with primitive but warp-resistant substitutes. The effects on the host would be severe… but no doubt the alternative would be far worse." Tzeentch said, stroking the beard of feathers that hung from the underside of his beak.
The Wulfen… Leman thought.
"However, that is only when the gene is unexpressed… when activated, my simulations have shown that it can momentarily act as an amplified version of the normal psyker gene, allowing the user to channel extreme levels of warp energy. Truly fascinating, and I have barely even begun to scratch the surface! Ah, but here I am wasting time, going on unimportant tangents once again. Come, allow me to take you to my personal observatory and meeting room. We have very important things to discuss, champion." Tzeentch said.
They arrived in a circular room topped with a large, glass dome which gave a clear view of the kaleidoscopic night sky. The interior was surprisingly mundane, consisting of cluttered wooden furniture and a surprising lack of technology. Haphazard piles of books and papers littered the floor and covered every available shelf and desk in the room, surrounding a large telescope which hung from the ceiling on a complex bronze armature.
"Ah! Apologies, I, uh… don't get visitors very often." Tzeentch said, laughing nervously. He waved his hand and caused several piles of books to levitate into the air, revealing an antiquated wooden couch. "Please, take a seat." Tzeentch said, sitting down at a wooden desk covered in small devices and magical trinkets. Admu sat down on the couch while Leman remained standing. Tzeentch could read Leman's intent through his dour expression and took a deep breath. "I'm sure you have many questions, champion. My siblings have no doubt been… reserved with sharing information with an outsider such as yourself. However, seeing as you have now passed all of our trials, I believe you have more than earned the answers you seek."
"Alright then, 'Tzeentch'…" Leman said, crossing his arms. "Tell me what you really are."
"Admu, you may want to pay attention." Tzeentch said. "I told your father it was about time you knew the truth, and after everything you've been through, I believe you have more than proven you are ready to hear it." Admu leaned forward with an astute expression, perched on the edge of her seat.
"The warp was not always the maelstrom of cruelty and corruption that you and your kind know it as today, Leman Russ. Once, it was placid and largely benign, though all of that changed during the War in Heaven." he said.
"I have heard of this before." Leman said. "It is an ancient Aeldari legend, no?"
"Oh, it was no legend. A war of such magnitude and devastation, never seen before in this galaxy… nor since. Words could not begin to describe the scale of the destruction, but all that needs to be known is that this unfathomable desolation rippled throughout the Immaterium. You see, the warp is a reflection of the thoughts and emotions of conscious beings, and the destruction wrought during that terrible conflict spread throughout it like a cancer. It festered and metastasized into a malevolent will, loosely tied to four fundamental aspects of conscious experience. As a result, the beings which were born from this turmoil reveled in the cruelty and malice that surrounded them, consuming it. These four beings are what you know as the Chaos Gods. They seek to influence mortal souls in the material plane so as to cultivate the corruption which fuels them, harvesting the souls of their followers for their own self-gain. I am sure you are familiar with all of this, Leman."
"I am… more familiar than I ever wished I would be." he said, his brow furrowed intensely.
"However, I am sure that you also know that even with the malignant influence of the Chaos Gods, the four aspects which they represent cannot be corrupted completely. Even within beings of such monstrous evil, a kernel of goodness remained; the sliver of hope that all mortals cling to even in the darkest of times. To the Ruinous Powers, this tiniest mote of benevolence was like a poison. In their gluttony they had created an extreme imbalance within the warp, one which should have naturally returned to equilibrium. This imbalance, if left untreated, would eventually reach such a point that even the Chaos Gods themselves would be unable to maintain it… and be destroyed."
"What prevented this?" Leman asked.
"They were smart. They found a way to subvert this process, to continue indulging in their depravity without the fear of succumbing to their own gluttony. They made a pact with one another, combining their powers to use the most arcane and ancient magic there is to extract the poison from within themselves and contain it, trapping it within an inescapable prison. That prison is where you have been this entire time." Tzeentch said, outstretching his arms.
"So you are these… 'good' aspects of the Chaos Gods?" Leman said, with a hint of incredulity.
"If that is how you wish to phrase it, then yes. All I can tell you is that if we were released from this place… toppling those despicable demons would be my first and only priority." Tzeentch.
"If this happened eons ago, it must have happened before the fall of the Aeldari Empire… meaning Slaanesh would not have been born yet." Leman said.
"Time does not work the same in the warp as it does in realspace, especially for them." Tzeentch said. "For each of the four, this happened simultaneously at the moment of their awakening as conscious beings… regardless of the time in which it truly occurred.
"Tell me, if you were such a threat to Chaos then why did they not simply destroy you? Why leave their greatest weakness locked away, no matter how secure, if there was even the slightest possibility it could be used against them?" Leman said.
"That would simply have exacerbated the problem by accelerating the imbalance. So long as we exist, but cannot impact the galaxy at large, the Chaos Gods can sew as much mayhem and destruction as they please." Tzeentch said.
Leman was silent, processing this new information. I just can't fathom it… He thought. The thought of a good aspect of the Chaos Gods, it just seems inconceivable. Though, if what he speaks of is true… could it mean there is a way to truly end the struggle against Chaos for good?
"Admu, you have been rather silent… is there anything you wish to ask?" Tzeentch said with a hint of concern in his voice.
"No… it's just the thought of someone going around with my papa's name… doing the things I saw… it makes my blood boil." she said, with a pained expression. "I'd do anything to put a stop to that." Tzeentch sighed.
"I as well, my dear." he said.
"Tell me, Tzeentch, what else do you know of the galaxy?" Leman said, changing the subject. "Can you tell me what has happened in my absence?"
"Unfortunately, my vision of what has transpired in the galaxy for the past few millennia has been… clouded, at best." Tzeentch said. "Something - or someone - has been blocking my visions." Leman looked down in frustrated disappointment. Tzeentch decided to break the uncomfortable silence. "Come now, this is no time for sadness. You have passed the final trial! That which you seek is finally at hand, Leman Russ. I will prepare rooms for the night so that you may rest and recuperate. In the morning, we set out to the highest peaks in all the land, the Hall of the Hesperides! There, you will surely find what you are looking for."
"What exactly am I looking for? What lies in these 'Halls of Hesperides?'" Leman said.
"No idea!" Tzeentch said. "The Halls lie beyond the veil. None of us can pass through it, but you can. My warpsight may not be as sharp as it used to be, but I have a feeling that whatever lies beyond those mountains is the key to everything. It has to be."
"It seems I will just have to go there and find out for myself, then." Leman said.
A bronze construct led Leman and Admu to their rooms, which lay down the hall from Tzeentch's office. Despite the monastery's outward appearance and the sprawling complex which lay beneath it, the quarters were rather quaint. An old rug with intricate patterns carpeted the floor, and the walls were made of aged wooden planks just like the bookshelves which lined them. Fenris was not exactly known for its libraries, but the ones it did have were similarly austere. It was oddly comforting. He sat down on the old wooden bed in the corner of the room and prepared to settle down for the night before he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Upon opening it, he was greeted by Admu.
"What is the matter?" Leman said.
"Um, well, since you finished all of your trials… that means you're going to leave soon, right?" she said.
"Ideally, yes. I was tasked with retrieving something from this realm a long time ago, so that I might return to my people in their time of need." he said.
"Well, I just… I just wanted to say thanks for taking me with you. I had such a wonderful time traveling with you, visiting places I've never been before, hearing about what lies beyond my home… even if it wasn't all good, I'm glad to have learned about it alongside you." she said.
"Well, I should be the one thanking you. In truth I probably wouldn't have made it as far as I did without yo-"
Before Leman could finish his sentence, Admu picked him up in her embrace. She put him back down, tears welling up in her eyes, and quickly ran back to her room before Leman could say another word. Leman, feeling strangely conflicted, returned to his bed and retired for the night.